


Beating the Bad Things

by blue_the_blue_raspblue1



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adopted Harry Potter, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Depression, Guilt, Harry Potter - Freeform, Implied Child Abuse, Implied Past Abuse, PTSD, Self Harm, Severus - Freeform, Severus Snape - Freeform, Severus Snape Adopts Harry Potter, Triggers, harry - Freeform, mental health, potter, self blame, snape - Freeform, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 18:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16270196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_the_blue_raspblue1/pseuds/blue_the_blue_raspblue1
Summary: Harry's second year couldn't have been worse for him, so he turns to the worst possible outlet.





	Beating the Bad Things

**Author's Note:**

> This will contain content that can trigger. Read with caution, may not be the best read if you struggle with thoughts of self-harm.

It was easy. Too easy. Easy to hide and pretend like he had nothing to hide, nothing to fear, nothing wrong, and nothing to say. Harry's second year was horrifying, and with no other way to control the triggers from his first 11 years at the Dursley’s, anxiety, and obvious PTSD, he stole a spare shaving razor from his dad, took it apart, and cut. Stupidly talking to a journal instead of taking it to his dad, 5. Mrs Norris, 1. Collin Creevy, 2. Hermione, 10. Almost losing Ron and Ginny, 10. Wiping the memory of a man’s life, 10. Killing 2 men, and an animal, 20. The more and more he did it, the easier it was to do it. His arms, shoulders, and thighs were covered in scars that used to be heavily bleeding, deep open wounds. The robes were long sleeved, and with it being with the winter months, it gave him the excuse to get some long pajamas underneath. Cutting, he realized, made him feel good, he hadn't been this happy in several months! Ignoring the sobbing at night as he panicked to clot the bleeding of a particularly bad day when he couldn't use magic, it worked beautifully! It was like magic! His marks on his school work were up, his school work was much easier to understand afterward when his head was clear, and he hadn't had a panic attack for a week. His nightmares got progressively worse though, and it was wearing both him and his father thin from lack of sleep. Harry smiled through massive dark bags under his eyes, and his father snapped when people dropped their quills. Realizing that sooner rather than later he would need to ease the pressure off of the student population, he gradually started applying silencing charms, or sleeping in his closet. His father never found out because, at this point, his body was used to waking up unnaturally early to begin work from the Dursley's, so he could get in bed and do school work, and take the charm off before his dad ever knew. The change was drastic, his dad wasn't waking up as much, his classes and attitude were better, and no one was suffering as long as Harry took the extra sleep out of his schedule.   
The moment his marks started slipping again was where it started getting messy. McGonagall would call meetings about them, and that meant his dad was there too, and he had to take both of them lecturing him late into the night about the importance of good work ethic. This rose tensions between himself and his father, every night being a fight to get the work done. One not understanding why his child, who understood everything he was given, was suddenly not getting anything, the other struggling to see the point in doing any of this. The child who had drive to do this work was still there, right? The cutting got worse, and suddenly his thighs had no more empty space, and shorts were a no go. He was forced to drop quidditch because his marks were too low, it's not like he wanted to do it anyway. He was put in every remedial class there was, his dad was losing his mind, trying to understand what was going on because nothing could prepare him for this behavior or how to deal with it. Harry isolated himself, and stayed hidden for large portions of the day in his bedroom, in his closet or under the bed, revelling in the dark safety of the small spaces. He never cut here because this was a safe place. He never brought any harming behaviors into these spaces because if he did, it would be tainted, no longer safe. When he was here, he was no where. He wasn't at school, he wasn't at home, he wasn't being yelled at, he wasn't doing homework. Instead he was safe, and he was Harry. The school year had ended, and as a last ditch effort to show his dad he was trying, he got E and O’s on his OWLS.   
The summer proved hard to hide anything, all his summer clothes were shorts and short sleeved, so his only option was to wear his muggle jacket and jeans, and ride out the heat wave and sweat in near heat stroke conditions. His dad constantly urged him to take them off, that he would get sick, but with every deep cut lain deeply within his arm and thighs, he just shook his head and said “it's just part of the fashion dad”. The cutting was slowly becoming more of a 'ive done it every night this week so I might as well tonight, it always feels good after’ than a 'i need it to feel better’ and this was where he was starting to worry. His panic attacks were frequent during the day and could be set off by anything, he was jumpy and had constant flashbacks, his nightmares were atrocious, and he would have multiple a night instead of one. He was getting very little sleep and it was starting to affect his daily functions.

This is how his dad found out. 

When Harry was catching up on summer school work, his dad knocked, and came into his room, and asked that Harry come sit on the bed with him. He asked about the nightmares, Harry lied, and said, no. Then was he staying up instead of going to bed and that was why he was so exhausted? He said no. Then he had to be lying about the nightmares, he said, because Harry hated staying up late, and that likely meant he was hiding it again. You aren't supposed to hide them, he said. I'm here to help you, he said. Don't sleep anywhere but on the bed he said, because there are ways I can make sure you do, and there are ways I can make sure you aren't hiding it. I don't want to do that he said, but if I have to I will. Harry yelled at him to leave, using spectacularly colorful language, and ended up grounded for a very long time. He didn't know it, but his dad was ready that night. He didn't set wards because he still wanted his child to trust him, but he resolved to have the issue found out by tonight, so that this didn’t continue into the school year like last time. He checked on his child 4 times between the times of 10 pm-3 am and on the fourth one, he went in to find the child thrashing and screaming under the covers in dead silence. It must have been cases of accidental magic, and if that were the case he must really not want Severus to know. This made his chest hurt. Undoing the charm, the screaming made his heart clench cause it hadn’t been this bad since he had first moved in. Shaking the boy awake, the covers were thrown off in a hurry as the child whimpered and tried to hide from the threatening hands.   
Severus’ eyes widened in horror as he looked at the boy’s shaking arms and thighs, as Harry slowly realized what had happened. He pointed at the door and screamed at his father to get out, to get away from him, but all the man did was get in the bed, and bring his child as close to him as he could despite the struggling to get away, and the ear splitting screaming that was slowly devolving to desperate sobs as the boy clung to him. Severus would tell this to anyone that asked him about his child’s scars that he had cried that night. He cried for Harry and the pain it must have taken to go so far. He cried over the fact that he never noticed how much suffering he was going through in silence, nor how badly the year had taken a toll upon his mental health. He cried because it was like they had finally gotten to a steady jogging speed up a steep hill, and now they were tumbling back to the beginning of reality detachment, PTSD, triggers, and mental health. He knew it was going to happen at some point, but not to such an extent.  
Harry couldn’t stop sobbing, grasping to the robes like they were as important as oxygen. His best kept secret had come out to the one person he didn’t want to know in the entire world, and he didn’t know what was going to happen. No matter how absurd he knew it to be, he couldn’t help that his first thoughts were ‘is he going to hit me? Starve me? Lock me away? Give me away? Yell at me?’ he knew they were all wrong, because the one that got chosen was ‘he’s going to love me’ as he was held and rocked that night by his father. Sitting in the man’s lap, he was given a vial of dreamfull sleep, his dad’s words being ‘you deserve to rest kindly’, he dreamt of his friends, he dreamt of quidditch, his dad, leaving the Dursley’s, pancakes with chocolate and syrup, soups and sleeping in his dad’s bed.  
Severus never left that night, holding his child as he slept peacefully for what had to be the first time in close to a year, and only fell asleep when he was sure the child was ok. He lay beside his child, holding him close, stroking his hair, trying to stop the tears over what he had to have done wrong not to notice this kind of thing, and what on Earth was he going to do to help his child who was so clearly in need of support and love that had clearly been so sorely lacking to the point of resorting to harming himself so critically. As the child slept he performed numerous charms to seal the new wounds upon his arms and legs, and went back to stroking the boy’s hair in the way he had found out calmed the child when he first adopted him, and saw a night terror occur. The morning came entirely too quickly and by the time he felt the child shift, he had only gotten an hour of sleep. The boy was shimmying out of the bed and wandered to the bathroom, looking back at his dad nervously. He called to the boy softly, asking for him to bring every tool he had out to him. The boy seemed to crumble at the words, but did so, and he watched as the boy brought out a broken up razor. Casting a silent and wandless accio for any other blades, knives, or razors, no more came out and he hugged the boy in thanks for trusting Severus to help.   
He banished them, and told the boy there would no more razors in the house, and the use of kitchen knives would be only under supervision, as well as potion knives. He grabbed the child’s wringing hands and asked him why. The child could only shrug for a little but Severus stayed quiet and waited until the boy finally spoke, saying ‘I can’t handle it anymore. I’ve killed an innocent animal, I’ve killed two men, I wiped someone’s life memories away, my friends all almost died because of me, I disappointed you and everyone else in school, I have nightmares every night and whenever I bother you with them you lose sleep and you’re always angry the next day with me and your classes, I can’t figure out how to be a good kid anymore and it was the only the only way to help because I had no one to talk to, but it stopped helping suddenly so I kept going to see if it would and it never did so it became about hurting instead and it just got worse and worse up until you found out.’ Severus could barely contain the labored breathing that signified the start of his weeping as he listened to his twelve year old child pour his heart out about the pain in his life that he couldn’t handle alone.   
He pulled the child into his lap and whispered that he was sorry that he had no clue, that he was sorry he didn’t help, that he was sorry he felt he couldn’t speak to him. He told him that he’d be there for him no matter what, and even if it seemed like it would never end, he would make sure Harry made it to the other side of this and could look back and see that this was just something he was going to have to beat once more. It was a hurdle, and one of his biggest ones to come but he would help him make it no matter what. They sat in Harry’s room for the day, and Severus helped Harry with his work, and whenever there was a frustration or the child couldn’t get past something, Severus made sure they got through it together, and that it was taken care of thoroughly. He ordered lunch to their rooms, and they ate together, and as they did so, they spoke through some of the problems this stemmed from, and if Harry couldn’t quite get passed them, they resolved that they would continue to work on it as time passed until they did. Severus loved his child, and Harry loved his dad, and neither of them would let the other suffer through something quite so painful alone again.

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.crisistextline.org/selfharm/  
> https://www.crisistextline.uk/  
> https://www.crisistextline.ca/  
> https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/  
> https://www.childhelp.org/hotline/  
> https://www.acf.hhs.gov/fysb/programs/family-violence-prevention-services/programs/ndvh
> 
> Take care of yourselves, you can all do this.


End file.
